Yahoo starts clock on Earth time capsule

Yahoo has set out to capture life on Earth in digital formats
for a time capsule to be buried in Silicon Valley as well as beamed
into the cosmos from Mexico.

The internet giant invited people worldwide to contribute
pictures, videos, songs, ideas, drawings or anything else they
could digitise for a "first-ever electronic anthropology project"
to document human life in 2006.

Submissions could be uploaded via the internet to regionalised
"Yahoo Time Capsule" websites.

Yahoo will celebrate the project with a grand three-day ceremony
at The Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, about 40 kilometres from
Mexico City, beginning on October 25.

The event will be webcast, Yahoo said.

Time capsule submissions deemed exceptional will be projected on
the pyramid and all the digitised data will be beamed from the
Mexican monument into outer space, Yahoo editor and chief Srinija
Srinivasan said.

The data will be converted into an optic stream and projected
skyward, Yahoo executives said.

"We are bringing together this ancient site with present-day
culture in the time capsule and at the same time beaming it into
space for the future," he said.

"It is there for whoever is out there."

Yahoo "invited a few folks" to get it started.

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson provided some of her thoughts
about Andalusia, while famed action film director John Woo put a
bit of his first comic book in the time capsule, Srinivasan
said.

"It is really a view, or lens, on what is going on in the
world," Srinivasan said.

"The idea is to capture this snapshot in time. We want and we
expect to be surprised."

Submissions will be accepted for 30 days, with the window
closing on November 8.

Yahoo said time capsule contents would be archived on data
storing hardware and buried at a secret spot on its campus in
Sunnyvale, California.

Copies of the contents would be given to the Smithsonian
Institute recordings archives in Washington, as well as to The
National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City,
Yahoo said.

"It is fascinating that this is even possible," said Srinivasan,
who has been with Yahoo since it was a fledgling company with just
five workers. "Being online is much more pervasive around the
globe."

"You don't have to be a gadget hound or tech savvy to know how
to do these things any more. Who knows what it will be like in 10
years?"

Yahoo planned to open the time capsule when it celebrated its
25th anniversary in 2020.

"Even though it might seem like a short future out, I can only
imagine how we will look to our future selves given how rapidly
things are changing," Srinivasan said.